3 years for presidency is unconstitutional

The
constitution is the supreme law of this country and any law that is in
disagreement should be considered null and void – that is what Section (4) of
the Constitution tells us.

Therefore,
it will be unwise to suggest and insist that President Barrow must serve only
three years and step aside. This idea is telling Gambians that we need to
concentrate on politics and forget about what is at stake and what needs to be
done, but go spend millions of dalasis again by going to the polls next year
and get ready for another transition.

Proponents
of this idea of going to polls next year might be blinded by the scale of
financial commitment involve in elections. They are letting us know that they
are not sensitive to some of the monumental challenges that we face as a
country.

What
that mean in practice, however, is that on microeconomic policy, they are in
support of competition, trust-busting and deregulation. On macroeconomic
policy, their views are even closer a dictator that has been forced just a year
ago. We have to understand that politic is politic – and in politics many have
long been around to understand that public interest isn’t always the priority
of everyone. But today, in this Information Age, individual interest would
never last long.

In politics, we are all governed by the
constitution, but because we have a bigger ambition, sometimes politicians use
certain kind of langue to bring about con fusion. If Section (4) of the
Constitution of The Gambia is anything to go by, what do we have to keep
unending arguments over whether President Barrow should serve three or five
years as president of The Gambia.

The
fact that there was an ultimate goal that ousted a long time dictator, the
issue of Barrow serving three years
should now fade in the woodwork. This may be an agreement by the coalition but
it’s not written in stone. We have to put the national interest first and
forget about our individual interests.

Minister
Bah is right when he said that for Barrow to serve only three years is a joke;
because he understands how much it would cause our country to conduct another
presidential election next year.

According
to Bah, the Constitution of The Gambia supersedes any agreement that might have
been agreed upon by the coalition members.

“It
is true that as coalition, we agreed that whoever leads and wins the
presidential election will serve for 3 years and reorganise another election,”
he said. “But the constitution mandates President Barrow to serve for 5 years
and that must be respected”.

We
have a microeconomic policy and therefore we are not exponents of trust-busting
neither are we in support of deregulation. Conducting another presidential
election next year will cause this country, so we need to keep concentrating on
our development aspiration and stay away from politics a bit.

“Don’t
interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is
the only safeguard of our liberties.”